A “Crumby” Story

Are you having a crummy week?  How about a crummy story (literally) to make you feel better?  The events you are about to witness actually did happen-this is not much of a dramatization.  I must warn you that the writing style used is not grammatically correct for humor’s sake and you may find some of the pictures a bit “icky”  Read at your own risk…. 😉

 

 

Picture it – Girl in the kitchen (that’s me!), after midnight (did I mention I am a night owl?) , embarking on a glorious, new recipe tryin’ , cookin’ adventure towards chocolate bliss….

or NOT.

 

A friend came over for tea this summer with a wonderful bag of freshly baked chocolate cookies in tow.  I said , ” I must have this recipe!” …..fudge-y chocolate goodness it was.  So I decide after midnight I am going to bake these cookies for my parents for part of their anniversary gift that weekend.  It starts out cheerful enough.  I am a good & experienced baker (done it since I was in elementary school) and I have already tasted these cookies, so I just know they are going to turn out delish!

 

So I get to mixing them – boy is that chocolate dough good!  I follow the instructions exactly (the only difference is that I used butter, which is what the original recipe called for, but my friend used margarine and also – I used organic spelt flour).  Now with my dough mixed, I am ready to mold that yummy mound of chocolate dough into balls and roll them on the counter into the sugar, before baking them.  This is where it gets tricky….

 

Recipe does not say to chill dough first or anything.  Just says to roll into balls and roll in sugar.  I get me a heaping Tablespoon of dough and proceed to the “ball making”.  Let me just tell you folks – this did not go as planned.  The dough was super sticky and was getting worse the longer I handled it.  I couldn’t even roll it into a ball, so I slapped each lump down on the counter on top of the sugar , hoping that would give it some traction to help me get these balls a “rollin” so to speak.  🙂

 

Before long I started to feel like Lucille Ball from one of my favorite episodes – The Chocolate Factory one.  Yep!  I was basically rolling around a chocolate-y mess on the counter tops (that was starting to almost melt) , leaving sticky trails of chocolate everywhere ( I hate to say what it looked like, but you will see for yourself in a moment).   Needless to say, I finally got the first batch in the oven.

 

While that was baking, I decided – to heck with what the recipe says, –  I was going to add more flour.  Usually that does the trick.  Oh , but not so – with these super sticky ” looks like baby poo” chocolate balls.  It didn’t matter how much extra flour I added..it only made them slightly less sticky.

 

First batch comes out of oven.  Friend’s note literally says ” Cookies will rise and then fall after they come out of the oven”.  Well that is all well and fine , but fall these cookies did not.  No need to worry about the falling part , they didn’t even rise in the first place haha!

 

These cookies spread out thin as heck and stuck.  Stuck to the pan BAD.  Recipe did not say to grease pan first.  Here I am with spatula in hand trying to pry these off the baking sheet- to no avail.  I actually think a paint chisel would have been best.  But alas- I finally start to get them off of the pan.  Now don’t these look pretty and perfect for gift giving?

 

I tried to fix the dough as mentioned above and the second batch came out the exact same way (extra flour or not).  Frustrated, I looked to my left at the brown streaked counter top with the pathetic sticky balls next to it , and then to my right -at the broken-up crumby mess.  It was apparent that in the great cookie match of 2012- the chocolate balls had won and I was defeated.  I looked at the clock and decided to throw in the towel and go to bed…. But not before re-enacting the I Love Lucy episode first.  Who says I’m too old to play with my food? Ha!

 

These cookies are supposed to sort of puff up and be thicker and chewy.  Kind of like a brownie.  What went wrong? I don’t know.  Could it be that my friend left out some important info (such as chill dough) , could it be that margarine really does work better than butter (trans fat and all) or does usage of spelt flour severely alter the recipe? ( I wouldn’t think so as I use it for other things).  These are the pressing questions I will have to find the answer to via do-over.

 

So what is so inspiring about this Crumby story?  The fact is- I had 2 choices – I could either get angry at how awful this turned out (knowing I had wasted my time & would have to bake again the next day since these were awful) or I could see the humor in it and laugh it off.  I did get frustrated about it at first, but then chose humor.

 

So what became of the remainder of the dough?  Trash?  I think not!  That would be a waste…  No, the other half of the dough was pressed into a baking dish as the crust for a dessert pizza 🙂

 

And the moral of this story is :

Turn your set backs into come backs!! – or “crumb backs” as it were 😀

 

 

Linked at Finding the Funny